UC: A golden goose for the channel?

Every day your customers are dealing with multiple devices, numbers, passwords, inboxes and security environments. Missed calls, telephone tag and security exposures are some of the challenges today’s user experiences. These challenges are being addressed by Unified Communications (UC).

UC combines presence, real-time communication modes such as IM, telephony, video and application sharing, and near real-time communications modes such as email and voicemail, into a single experience – anytime, anywhere and over any device.

It creates a collaborative environment that decouples communications from the location of the user and which device he or she is using, and blends communication services with personal productivity tools such as calendaring and directories.

In a nutshell, UC is a presence-enabled communications and collaboration system, with integrated telephony and email, and with a unified user experience over any device, anywhere, anytime.

Cost of entry
While it all sounds good on paper, always remember that UC rides as a real-time application on top of a wired or wireless IP network.

The real measure of the performance of UC systems is how well the user’s requirements are met. The user’s perception is affected by voice and video quality, as well as by expectations for telephony-grade reliability and security.

The underlying network has to therefore consistently deliver the security, connectivity, bandwidth and delay performance required by UC users
and applications.

Unfortunately, many networking deployments today have been driven by non-real-time data networking requirements. UC demands anytime, anywhere access, including Wi-Fi that is optimised for real-time traffic. It demands endpoint security that controls the availability of network and application resources.

As UC permeates the employee population and is integrated into business processes, it becomes business-critical and demands always-on operation, even when failures have occurred.

The user quality of experience is affected by the underlying network operation and how it accelerates real-time applications over legacy data. Finally, UC needs to be available at all sites across the enterprise.

Finding the opportunities
The opportunities of UC for the channel go beyond moving your customers’ existing IP-enabled (or in some case legacy) networks to a full suite of integrated solutions from one or more vendors.

There is a real drive on for resellers to be able to integrate – by that I mean really be one-stop shops and integrate the infrastructure, data and voice network with the desktop.

It’s becoming much less acceptable to drop the boxes and walk away. This is a real challenge for many resellers who typically don’t have the skills to deploy IP telephony and/or data services – and in the case of UC, expertise in both.

The transformational benefits are only realised when UC is integrated with business applications and processes.

Communications-enabled applications allow users to leverage UC capabilities directly from within the business applications they use every day (e.g. to easily contact the creator of some critical information directly from the application that uses this information).

Communications-enabled applications can also leverage UC capabilities automatically, triggered by an event or a change, thus eliminating the human delay inherent in many business processes, and delivering higher productivity.

For example, an application can automatically schedule a meeting at a convenient time for participants in response to an event. Communications-enabled applications leverage UC to effectively reach critical individuals in the most appropriate fashion to accelerate the process.

But I digress; delivering comprehensive UC solutions and extending these to the contact centre, as well as business applications and business processes, presents a major opportunity for resellers of both voice and data networks.

Beyond networking
The good news is that it’s in the integration work where the real margins are. The premium that customers are prepared to pay for the integration skills are offsetting and in many cases exceeding what’s traditionally been available.

You want your customers to be able to connect, communicate and collaborate anywhere, anytime, but how? How do you get your arms around convergence? Is UC for real, or just marketing hype?

How do you integrate your voice network – including converged IP solutions and IP PBX capabilities – with desktop and UC applications from Microsoft or IBM?

And how do you find the expertise to design, deploy and support UC so you can spend your time taking care of your own business?

The answer lies in the services you wrap around your UC packages.

The type and number of services you can offer alongside a UC integration project are long and varied. They include, but aren’t limited to:

• business consulting;

• application, convergence, infrastructure and deployment planning;

• VoIP assessment;

• WAN/LAN and wireless engineering;

• security assessment;

• program management;

• project management;

• integration and acceptance;

• network verification;

• deployment planning;

• application and multi-vendor integration;

• call centre design;

• converged office integration;

• network optimisation; and

• Quality of Service or Quality of Experience validation.

Given that UC is still in its infancy, relatively speaking, it's hardly practical to offer all of these services from day one. It might not even be possible to offer any of these services so early in the game, which is why the selection of technology, and thorough investigation of the training and services of the technology vendor, are critical before you start flashing the 'open for business' sign on your UC shop.

I said early on that box movers are not welcome in the UC space, and for good reason. You can't construct a solid business out of building UC networks without the services that make them run more efficiently. Just as the technology is new to you, it's even newer – and in some cases far more perplexing – to your customers.

My advice – look to your suppliers to give you a leg up with their services, and to seamlessly integrate their services with your own. Customers are really becoming quite selective in their buying decisions and are very conscious of a vendor's 'story', especially when it comes to buy-in for such a business-critical technology.

This is not only driving buying trends, but also affecting key influencers of the industry such as Gartner. Its magic quadrant, for example, is very much influenced by your suppliers' ability to have a credible solution in this space, and you can be sure your customers will know all about it from their research (and if not, tell them!).

Don’t eat the goose
UC, if applied properly, will make your customers much more efficient and productive by giving their staff access to integrated communications tools from the applications they use every day, and giving them shortcuts to communicating with colleagues, always knowing if and when they’re available.

But it’s not going to happen overnight, or with the flick of a switch. UC is as much a paradigm shift in the way we work and communicate as it is an evolution of IP communication technology. Which is where your services – or more correctly – your suppliers’ services come in, especially at the start.

Knowing how to service your customers, whether they pray to the Lotus or Microsoft gods, and how the technology will impact their business, is half the battle won. Show them you can do it from day one, and you’re first through the door.